


A Guiding Hand

by Bluandorange



Series: Overwatch Sentinel/Guide AU [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Blackwatch (Overwatch) - Freeform, Blackwatch Jesse McCree, Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Canon-Typical Violence, Dad Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Deadlock Jesse McCree, Depression, Drug Use, Empath, Guide!Gabriel Reyes, Guide!Jesse McCree, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Medical Trauma, Military Background, Needles, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Overstimulation, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Sentinel!Angela Ziegler, Sentinel!Jack Morrison, Sentinel/Guide, Soul Bond, Torture, Trans Jesse McCree
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-02 01:08:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14533383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluandorange/pseuds/Bluandorange
Summary: Thanks to advances in medical science, people born with abnormal neurological passage ways can now be medicated, for their own safety and the safety of others. In some countries, these medications are mandated by law. America requires anyone born with the ability to manipulate auras to be on empathic suppressants after age 13. Only practicing, licensed Guides are allowed to go unmedicated.Jesse McCree happens to think those medications suck, thanks very much, so when he has to chose between life in prison (heavily medicated) and life as a trained military Guide (no medication! ever again!), its not much of a choice at all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Maybe you recognize the Sentinel/Guide au, maybe you don't. Either way, the McHanzo is upcoming in a future part, this is all set up and Dad!Gabe-ness
> 
> I assure you, I'm completely rewriting the rules for this stuff, the set-up is needed. There will be No Weird, Misogynistic Gender Stuff. Our main boys are trans, yes, but that's because I'm trans so everything I touch is trans. I can't warn you about the eventual sex because I haven't planned it out entirely, if there will be penetration if any or where, but I do promise it's 100 percent consensual. Tags will be added when I iron out the deets

They had him in a concrete cell, he hadn’t seen the sky in going on a week, had only air rank with his own BO to breathe and something like cold tasteless mush to eat once a day and none of that was the worst part. None of that even came close to the Worst Part.

The Worst Part was the fucking drugs.

A dose every four hours, they said, and he was sick from it, and had been sick for a fucking week.

He’d woken up drugged. Guess they couldn’t risk it, had to knock him out before he could Charm his way outta this fucking mess, better just pump him full of their fucking poison and lock him in a box, _just to be safe._

Every four hours like goddamn clockwork. Even if he was sleeping, which he usually was, because it’s all he felt like doing while full of this horseshit. Wasn’t nothing else to do, nothing to look at, no one to talk to, not a single goddamn thing to _feel_ through the medicated scratchy woolen blanket of a goddamn _straight jacket_ they’d stuffed him into.

They were so fucking scared of him. They had to be. Couldn’t chance letting him be himself, oh no, not someone like _him_ , unmedicated! Untreated! _Unleashed!_

That’d be goddamn pandemonium! Be like letting the Devil himself loose, he’d do nothing but cause chaos!

…okay, so maybe he was a little guilty of that, but what kid his age wasn’t?

Point was they’re fucking overreacting.

He shouldn’t have to feel this way.

He hated feeling this way.

It’d been different people each time, guys and girls not much older than him, grunts or nurses or some shit poking him in the goddamn arm, and he couldn’t even fight them if he wanted to because he felt too fucking heavy and tired. He sneered at them, glared into their foreheads like he could still stab into their stupid fucking brainmeat with his own mind, but nothing happened, and then the shot was in him and then they just left.

He kinda wished it’d at least, like, hurt or something, but it didn’t. Maybe the first one did, who knows, he’d been fucking out when it happened, and now he’s numb all over. Now he can’t feel a goddamn thing.

They had to be giving him fucking military grade shit, there’s no way this was what normal suppressants were like. No way in hell. No one could function like this. He’d met bastards on suppressants, before; they were pathetic, sure, but they weren’t _this_.

Who the fuck could live like this?

After his next prick, another guy came in, wearing one of those military uniforms. The guy wrestled him into the cuff on his bed, locked his wrist in, and he couldn’t help it, he just stared at the fucker like he was the dumbest piece of shit he’d ever goddamn met. Because he _was._ What did this fucking pig think _he_ , drugged all up to fuck and back, was gonna fuckin do that he wouldn’t have already tried at some other point In The Past Week?

But the fucker just locked up his wrist and left. Nurse was gone too, good fucking riddance.

This was followed by a whole lot of _nothing_ , which he didn’t have enough of a shit left to be pissed about. All these dramatics just so he could keep sitting on a bed he’d been on for days. Great. Someone paid for all this shit. Someone’s taxes. His mama’s taxes were going to this. God, that’s a depressing fucking thought right there.

He was just starting to muster up the energy to figure out how to lay down without cutting off circulation to his hand when finally the door opened and one of the biggest motherfuckers he’d ever seen waltzed in, dragging in a chair behind him. He had a folder of some kind in his other hand, which he dropped in his lap as he sat, chair positioned in front of the bed, and flipped it open.

“'Jesse James',” read the man, “that’s the name you gave the nurse when you woke up.” He looked up from the paper to give ‘Jesse’ a raised eyebrow. ‘Jesse’ replied with a slow blink. “You got any other aliases you wanna try, Jesse? Before I send this in, and it becomes legal?” Another pause, another non-reply. The man sat a little straighter, made that half-smile people do when they want you to know they aren’t smiling, they’ve no intention of smiling, but gosh they’re just trying so hard to be civil despite how awful you are. “Maybe you could give me your real name. Wouldn’t that be a surprise.”

‘Jesse’ forced his lips into something mirroring the man’s–slight upward tilt, doesn’t reach the eyes, expression still somehow flatter than Kansas–held it for a few seconds, then let it fall.

He wished he could see the man’s Real reaction, but no, everything was the same matte concrete grey, so what he got was a shrug somehow expressed through eyebrows which, fine, was interesting in and of itself. The man regarded his folder again, clearly pretending to read before asking with a just as clearly faked conversational air, “so, a ‘Guide’, huh?”

Suddenly the wrist shackle was making sense. How smart of them, strapping his arm down, knowing this guy would come in here and say just the right shit to piss him off enough to try swinging. He didn’t, mind, he just made a fist. And thought about punching him. Thought about punching him really fucking hard.

‘Was he a _Guide'?_ Well, shit, sure would explain all the BULLSHIT they were pumping into him every four fucking hours, wouldn't it! ‘Was he a Guide'? Fuck, he hated this guy. The fucking balls on him. _‘Was he a Guide’?_

The man smirked for just a moment, before flipping the page and making a show of reading the next for several seconds. “You seem a lil’ sick, kid, how long you been off your suppressants?” A pause. ‘Jesse’ slowly let his hand go limp, mostly because his palm was damp, which felt gross, and there wasn’t any point expending the energy to keep it closed. The fog was taking the anger away. He was back to grey and he hated it. He gave the man a slow blink.

The man tapped the paper with his index and forefinger. “Says here they couldn’t find any residuals in your system.” Pause. Blink. “Y’know, it’s illegal to go without your dose.”

A snort slipped out of him, which surprised him. The man, fucking bastard, didn’t so much as twitch. Just a deliberately raised eyebrow and a cock of the head as if to say ‘I’m listening’. ‘Jesse’s lips twitched again. He couldn’t help it. It just struck him as funny.

It was the first feeling besides ‘fuck the world’ he’d had in whole a week, it was almost refreshing.

The man waited patiently, like he knew the words were forming through the fog, and eventually ‘Jesse’ managed to unstick his tongue enough to say, “shit, man. I try so hard t’be an upstanding citizen.”

No, he didn’t. He helped run guns and drugs and Charm people into handing over more money than any of that shit was worth. The least of his crimes was skipping some government mandated pill his mama couldn’t fucking afford to buy him anyway. Weren't her fault she gave birth to a fucking freak.

The man sat forward, eyes on ‘Jesse’ as he swept the folder closed. “How’d you get mixed up in this?” he asked.

Well, now that ‘Jesse’ had said something once, it almost seemed rude not to keep the conversation going. He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Dunno what ya mean.”

“Did Deadlock pick you up cuz you’re a Guide?”

The smirk returned. “Nah,” ‘Jesse’ replied, “my good looks.”

He hadn’t been recruited because he was a Guide. It just helped. Helped him get the shit he wanted, so long as he was smart, so long as he didn’t try pulling any Charm over on his bosses. That’s the thing, though, he hadn’t needed to. You read a person’s Shine right, you don’t gotta force ‘em to feel fuck all. You just say the right shit, tell them what they want to hear, make ‘em happy to have you around and you’re golden. Most people didn’t know that about people like him. They thought it was all Charm and Tricks and Manipulation. They thought he could read their minds, brainwash them, make them into his puppets.

That’s why they were so scared. That’s why he was supposed to take those drugs.

It was so stupid. So fucking _stupid_ . They were so fucking gullible--he couldn’t do any of that shit! Even at his best, he couldn’t go around putting thoughts into people’s heads. He didn’t know the words they were thinking. It was all fucking _colors_ , and _feelings_ , and he just pushed them around, made them duller or brighter. He couldn’t make shit up out of nowhere, it had to already be there, in the mix.

He’d only just figured out how to hurt people with it. But so what? Didn’t they deserve to hurt, for _doing_ this _shit_ to him?

“You seem a lil’ upset, kid.”

‘Jesse’ looked up from where--from where he’d been glaring down into the floor, when had he started doing that? His hand flexed, fisted up tight and sweaty, nails digging into his palm. He tried to wet his lips, tried to push the anger down again but it wouldn’t _go_ , it was all he could feel and he could suddenly feel it _so much_.

“What’s wrong?” asked the man. “Go on; tell me.”

‘Jesse’ did. Before he could stop himself, it just all spilled out.

“Oh, nothin’ much,” he started, lips curling back to show his snaggle teeth. “They jus’ been stickin me with _needles_ every _fuckin_ hour.” The anger was so big in him, he was starting to shake. “You dunno how this feels. You _dunno_ —its like—” The words were starting to get away with him, eaten by the fog, but the anger pushed him on. He was leaning forward, the dull burn of the strap cutting into his wrist, tethering him to the bed as he babbled. “Its like everything’s gone grey, like they cut off my fucking arm, its _awful,_ alright? Its _fucked up,_ you’re all _sick_ doing this!”

The man never looked away from his eyes. “You want that shit out of your system?” he asked.

“Yes,” ‘Jesse’ said. He was starting to pant. He was tired and the anger was winding him.

“You want it bad enough to make me a deal?”

“Yes,” ‘Jesse’ said, then the words hit and with it came the shame. None of them were supposed to take deals. They were family. So he said; “but, they’re my family.”

So he shouldn’t.

The man sat back, mild disappointment written across his face. “I’m sure it feels that way,” he said, breaking eye-contact for just a moment. When he met ‘Jesse’s eyes again, his expression had resolved into weary understanding. “You think on it; join your family behind bars and spend the rest of your life medically castrated, or? Join me. I’ll take ya off the drugs, I’ll getcha a licence.” He picked his folder up and moved to stand. “Think on it.”

_“Yes.”_

He shouldn’t, but he _wanted_ it. More than Family, he wanted to be _himself_ again.

The man gave him a disapproving smirk. “I said _think_ on it, kid--”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” spat 'Jesse'. “The answer’s _yes._ ”

\--

Turns out, the man’s name was Gabriel Reyes.  
  
And he was a Guide, too.  
  
“You’re a sonovabitch, y’know that?” Jesse said, when he found out.  
  
“What? For doing my job?” replied Reyes.  
  
“You tricked me.”  
  
Reyes laughed, a short, rolling chuckle, showing Jesse his top row of teeth. “Sucks to be on the other end, don’ it? Remember that. But seriously,” he jabbed a finger at Jesse. “You didn’t say anything you weren’t already thinking. It was an interrogation, and we came to a civil understanding without you getting so much as a headache.”  
  
“I was _drugged_ . I’m _still_ drugged.”  
  
“About that–”  
  
Jesse grabbed the pillow off his new bed and lifted it like he planned to throw it at the man.  
  
“–you haven’t gotten your licence yet, until you do, there’s gonna be drugs.” Jesse raised the pillow a little higher, threatening, and Reyes just fucking _shrugged_ . “It’s the law, Jesse. You work for the government, now, you’re gonna have to follow that shit.”  
  
It was true. He’d signed his life away to the Us Government, took the name Jesse McCree to save his poor mama some shame, all to avoid drugs he was gonna have to keep taking for the next foreseeable future _anyway_ .  
  
He was such a fucking moron.  
  
Reyes had his whole fucking future planned out for him. He’d get his GED, then apply for his Guide’s licence, then join Reyes in the special ops division, overseeing the emotional well-being of his stupid fucking soldiers or whatever.  
  
Same soldiers that nearly pumped Jesse full of bullet holes on Route 66, by the way. Yeah, he had to just live with that goddamn knowledge. Reyes assured him (without prompting, fuck was it weird being around another Guide) that no one would give a shit about his past, even with ‘that dumbass tattoo’ on his arm, and he shouldn’t be worrying about it right now _anyway_ , he had a lot of shit to get through before he even met the team, shit he needed to focus on _now_ .  
  
Which was true. There was several years of _school_ between him and seeing the real action again. Yeah, yeah, there was a gun-range on base, but he’d have to _earn_ time there and _only_ with supervision.  
  
Jesse itched for it. Reyes saw that, liked that, reminded him again how he’d get back out there, if he saw this shit through to its end. “Keep hold of that fire, kid, yer gonna need it.”  
  
He didn’t see Reyes again for another week.  
  
In the meantime, the doctors started weaning him off the suppressants and onto a new dose meant for Guides In Training. The difference wasn’t immediate, much to Jesse’s fucking displeasure, but within a few days, the fog had cleared and Color had returned to his world.

Reyes had also kept his promise and along with his dose of Horseshit, Jesse was getting the same amount of T he'd been stealing through Deadlock. At least he didn't have to worry about backsliding on _those_ hard earned changes anytime soon.

He found out pretty quickly, though, that while he could see the Shine of people again, he couldn’t interact with it anymore. The medical straight-jacket was still on tight. At least he didn’t feel like crashing all the goddamn time. At least there no more needles.  
  
When Reyes finally came back around, Jesse half mistook him for a living breathing Thunderstorm.  
  
He hadn’t seen the man clearly before, he barely resembled the guy he remembered sitting across from him overseeing all that fucking paperwork.  
  
He remembered him being _big_ , sure, but in like a broad-shouldered, really tall kinda way. A _normal fucking guy_ kinda way. Now the man filled the whole fucking room with his presence. It swirled around him, the deep burgundy and gold and looming black of a thunderhead at sunset, and at the middle was the man himself, shining at the storm’s heart like a star.  
  
Jesse had never been around a Guide like this before. He didn’t know people like this fucking _existed._  
  
“Pick yer jaw up, kid, before you swallow a fly.”

Jesse snapped his mouth shut so fast his teeth clicked. After a moment of floundering, he managed to wrestle his awe down enough to replace it with a sneer. “How ‘bout you stop showing off?”

Reyes smirked. Just like that, the storm shrank inward like smoke played in reverse, wafting back towards the source of the fire, but the impression of the size lingered, like the negative left on the inside of your eyelids after a flash of lightning. Jesse ould still sense it stretching outside the confines of his little apartment, even as it gathered itself together all scrunched tight, laying in a messy halo around Reye’s head and shoulders.

That’s _not_ how that shit’s supposed to move, so Jesse felt comfortable forgiving himself for likely still having bug-eyes.

Reyes raised his arms in an exaggerated shrug; the halo bobbed and roiled with silent laughter. “Cut me some slack;" he said, "I didn’t know how much you could see. Sometimes ES2 makes auras appear smaller than they are, and as my daddy always told me; go big or stay home.”

ES2 was the drug they had Jesse on now; a pill a day, every morning. He was gonna have check-ups weekly where they’d collect his piss just to make sure he had that crap in his system.

“So you can just…make it do that?” Jesse asked.

“Sure.” Reyes dropped his hands to his hips, stood tall and proud and _sent_ a stream of smoke over toward Jesse. Despite himself, Jesse flinched. “Calm down, kid,” said Reyes, “I'm not gonna bite ya.”

Ashamed of the fear in him, Jesse stood straighter, met the smoke head-on with his own Shine. It wasn’t something he could see, whatever made up his Guide powers, whatever it was that interacted with the Shine of other people, but he could _feel_ it, same as he could feel with the tips of his fingers or the skin on his cheeks. The smoke never reached his body, but it met his Shine and he could _feel it,_ it was sharp electricity making his arm hairs rise and a cold penny held against his tongue and tobacco musk and a passed beer and late nights watching storms light up the mountains in the distance.

And somehow he knew none of those things were coming from Reyes. Reyes was pulling them from _Jesse_ , like…like ‘this is what you know. This is who I am, from what you know.’

Danger, maturity, safety.

Jesse slowly pulled back, a shiver in his spine even as he kept his shoulders tight and his head high. The smoke returned to Reyes. He quirked his lips enough at the corners to imply a smile. “Never met a real Guide, huh?” Reyes asked.

“Guess not,” said Jesse. Not if _that's_ what they’re able to do.

“But you have met ‘em.”

Jesse shrugged, ducked his eyes for a moment as he decided what to say. “Knew a girl with, like, half the gene,” he said. Safer to mention her and not Old Tommy. He was still technically part of Deadlock, even if Jesse wasn’t no more, and he was nice enough old fucker, didn’t deserve to have the military knocking on his shit door just cuz Jesse couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut.

Reyes shook his head, “that’s _not_ how that works, but lemme guess; she could see auras, but she had no empathy.”

Again that word, ‘aura’. It was the first time Jesse ever heard of it. Maybe. He had an inkling he’d heard something like it once, something about lights in the sky up north. Guess it made sense to compare them to the lights around people. ‘Empathy’, though. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.

“Sure,” Jesse said.

Reyes cocked up one eyebrow. “What about a ‘Sentinel’? You ever seen one of them?”

“Yeah,” said Jesse. Several faces came to mind, some of them dead now most likely, none he was ever gonna see again. “A few.”

“Scary bastards, ain’t they? Chaotic.” Reyes hit the ending ‘c’ hard. “You’ll be working with a lot of them, you get across the finish line. I want you to meet a few before then, get a feel for ‘em.”

“They don’t scare me none,” Jesse said. It felt good, not having to lie. Lies were so easy to spot, so he had no doubt Reyes saw through every one he'd told.

Reyes grinned a little wider. “Good. Put on your shoes.”

Far as Jesse figured, getting the chance to leave the apartment was worth whatever garbage Reyes had lined up for him. Probably some ‘scared straight’ shit, if he was reading the man’s tone right. Whatever. He’d dealt with a tweaked out Sent before. Didn’t matter if they were fucking army rats, Martha Wiggins two nights no tequila had them beat, he’d bet his hat on it.

Sucked he had to wear this fucking house arrest anklet everywhere. Shit was heavy and fucking awkward. Couldn’t wear his cowboy boots cuz the fucker had to be touching skin. Fucking stupid.

He paid more attention to how it bounced against his ankle as they walked than to the layout of the base. Figured since he’d be stuck here for the next forever, he weren’t in no rush to memorize shit. He asked Reyes when he’d have free reign to wander; Reyes said he’d take it up with his nanny.

“Y’mean yer not my nanny?”

Reyes snorted; the halo chased its own wispy tail in amusement. “Keep forgetting you don’t know who the fuck I am.”

“You could always fill a fucker in.”

“I’m the fucker in charge of your life, now. I–”

“Already _knew that_ ,” interrupted Jesse.

Reyes came to an abrupt halt, the movement so sudden, Jesse ended up dancing back several steps to avoid running headlong into his shoulders and the crackling cloud around them. Reyes turned, his expression was stony. “Let me _finish,_ ” he said. Jesse found it hard to keep meeting him in the eyes. “I’m the fucker in charge of your life now. You don’t have a rank; you haven’t earned one yet. You’re a freeloader and a pet-project, and _maybe_ one day I’ll make something useful out of you, but maybe you’ve got nothing to offer, in which case I’ll discard you back into the trash where you belong. I’m not your friend or your commander. I’m just the guy you gotta impress.”

Reyes put on that polite non-smile and raised his eyebrows nice and high. “That clear shit up?”

Jesse worked his tongue against his cheek and rubbed the anklet with the toe of his other foot.

“ _Hey.”_

A jolt went through Jesse and he had to bite back a squawk of surprise. He looked up to Reyes to find the smoke was becoming a storm cloud again. Reyes was looking at him, his smile wide enough to show teeth. “I ask you a question, you answer it.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Jesse. “Real fucking clear.”

Real clear this was the worst goddamn choice he’s ever fucking made in his life and you’re a fucking asshole on a fucking power trip.

Reyes put his teeth away, turned around and continued walking. Having no other choice in the matter, Jesse followed along, but at a safer distance this time.

He started noticing, as they went, people's reactions when they passed. Or, rather, people's reactions to _Reyes_ . Straight backs, eyes front, Shine or ‘aura’ or _whatever_ alert and sometimes paranoid. More than once, Reyes’ cloud reached out and did _something_ to the people as they passed close by. Some held their head a little higher after it, focused forward and kept walking. Others swallowed, walked faster, tried to clear the corner before…what, before Reyes noticed them? Or maybe stopped to ask them what they thought they were doing?

Whatever his ‘rank’, Reyes was running _something_ around here, and people knew it. They knew _him_ . Almost every single fucker they passed _knew_ him enough to have some opinion, and most of them could be summed up with ‘anticipation, bordering on fear’.

And Jesse knew they couldn’t even _see_ the Thunderhead. He was starting to feel less stupid for nearly shitting his pants.

Eventually, Reyes herded Jesse into what looked like a conference room. There was only one person inside, a blond man in reading glasses and a dumb uniform with a bunch of shiny bars pinned over his breast pocket. Jesse didn’t know enough about uniforms to say what all the logos and shit meant, but he’d bet that much metal bullshit had to amount to something.

The man was doing paperwork, a metric shitton of it. He didn’t look up when they entered, hell, he didn’t so much as twitch.

Reye’s thunderstorm unfurled, practically draping itself around the room. Reye’s himself gestured to the man at the end of the desk.

“This here’s Commander Jack Morrison. He’s taking time out of his busy schedule just to meet with you, ain’t he nice.”

Jesse waited a moment, to see if Mister Commander Jack Morrison would so much as _breathe_ in some way that acknowledged his existence. Nothing happened. Just the drag of pen on paper. He shot Reyes a questioning look.

Reyes gave him his non-smile in reply. “You notice anything special about Jack?” he asked Jesse.

Jesse looked at the man again, assessed his Shine.

It wasn’t all that interesting, mostly because he was working on boring legal forms and shit and, people were rarely shiny when they were looking at numbers or long-ass words. The Shine was the steely blue-grey of focus tucked tightly in around him, larger 'round the head and hands. Really, what immediately caught Jesse's attention wasn’t  _ Jack _ , so much as Reyes  _ around _ Jack. For once, Reyes didn’t feel bigger than the building. He was all here, in this room. And he was sprawling out like a pleased cat, his aura a smokey purple nearing affectionate pink where it curled around behind Jack's shoulders.

…no, wait, the pink was part of Jack's aura.

No. No, it--

Oh.

“Yeah,” said Jesse.

“Well,” Reyes tucked his thumbs in his pockets, “don’t leave me in suspense.”

Jesse looked away from Jack, met Reyes’ eyes. “You’re fucking or something, right?” he asked.

Across the room, Jack let out a heavy sigh. Jesse glanced away from Reyes to see the man had set his pen down to cover his eyes. Reyes, when he looked back to him, looked pleased as goddamn punch.

“Cmon, Jackie!” Reyes almost barked. “Kid’s from a rat hole in the fucking desert, doesn’t know his ass from a cactus–” and then he did something that surprised the shit out of Jesse; he dropped his big palm on Jesse’s shoulder and gave it a proud squeeze. Jesse knew it was meant to be read as ‘proud’ because that’s what the smoke was sending across their Shines. “But he got it in one,” Reyes’ continued, “that’s _impressive_.”

Jesse, for his part, stood there in stunned silence.

Jack finally looked up to meet Reye’s eyes and tiredly removed his reading glasses. “I’m glad you found a new project, Gabriel, I really am.” Jack motioned with the end of the glasses first at Jesse, then swept it toward the door. “Now, kindly get him the fuck out of my office.”

Reyes directed Jesse out the door, hand still on his shoulder. He removed it when they started down the hallway. It took another two turns for Jesse to find his voice again.

“What’s–” he cleared his throat, trying to rid himself from surprised, reedy tone, before continuing, “what’s a _Sentinel_ doing with, uh–with–with fucking _reading glasses_ , anyway?”

Reyes barked out a laugh, but otherwise didn’t answer.

Not wanting to rock an already unsteady boat, Jesse kept his mouth shut for the rest of the journey.

Their next stop was the observation window overlooking a training room. The men inside were all distinctly muted in a way Jesse recognized all too well. He didn’t need Reyes to tell him what he was looking at; almost every man down there had the Sentinel gene, and was using something to suppress it.

Reyes’ smoke gave him an encouraging nudge, so Jesse asked, “they drugged, or something?”

“Close,” Reyes replied. “The Sens you met were self-medicating, right? Downers like alcohol, cold medicine, bennies, weed, morphine, homemade SSR4. Helped ‘em for a bit, until they ran out. Still volatile,” Reyes slid his eyes to Jesse and added, “probably liked you a whole bunch.”

A few shitty memories sprung to mind; Jesse quickly stamped them back down and ignored the feeling they left behind, the way the back of his head felt _watched_ and he felt all exposed. No one was watching him, he _knew_ that, the feeling was all in his head–

And just like that, it was gone. He shot a glare to Reyes, _knowing_ he’d done something to smooth out the panic he fucking stoked in the first place. He had no goddamn _right_. Reyes just kept his eyes on the window glass. He motioned down to the soldiers, the Sentinels, as they lifted their weights methodically. “These boys have all been chipped. Military grade ASR; Automated Stimulus Regulation.”

Swallowing his anger, Jesse looked down, took this new information and applied it. Yeah, it made sense. They were all the same matte grey, all too perfectly _level_ , which wasn’t how a group of people on drugs ever looked. Even if they were all taking the same shit, there was usually variation. Coming into the high on one end or out the other. Not here. This was something new, something Jesse had never seen before.

Honestly, it was fucking creepy.

“The wonders of modern technology,” said Reyes.

Jesse shifted, uncomfortable. These were the poor fucks he was gonna have to work with?

“They’re not much different than you,” Reyes continued. “Most of ‘em grew up poor, too poor to afford the operation out of pocket. So they come to Uncle Sam, do their time, go home bloodied but human.”

The implication didn’t reach him then. Not yet. Right in that moment, all Jesse saw was a room full of poor grey bastards going through the motions. He didn’t know who the fuck would _ask_ for that, why anyone would go under the knife to get their soul cut out.

(He didn’t know any better.)

“If they have chips,” Jesse asked, “what the fuck do they need us for?”

Reyes gave him another not-smile, gave him a one-two pat on the shoulder and another brush of pride. “That’s a good fucking question, McCree. Don’t got the time to answer it, though, but I’ll set you up with some literature. How's that sound?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you may have noticed some changes! Yeah, I realized that uhm there's this feature? where you can link fics into a collection? and that maybe it'd be better if Jesse's backstory and all the world building horseshit be in one fic and then the McHanzo can be in another. So I did that 8Db 
> 
> Also thank you, thank you thank you to the people who messaged me when I was originally writing this chapter. It helped me with the world building so so much. I really appreciate it.

Reyes made good on that literature promise.

God, so much fucking literature.

Four years Jesse spent fucking buried under Guide and Sentinel related literature.

It’s all he looked at! It’s all Reyes would fucking _give_ him. He wanted Jesse to finish his GED, so he'd set him up with a tutor. Jesse was forced to sit with said tutor for six hours every goddamn day, and everything, _everything_ they covered came back to Guide and Sentinel related motherfucking literature.

Even his Spanish and German homework was shit about goddamn Guides and Sentinels.

Math was like the one place they didn’t _immediately_ try tying everything back to the overarching theme of Guide/Sentinel Bullshit. It got there eventually, though, with mapping wave-lengths associated with auras, and it was awful, partially because Jesse hated math (having dyscalculia can do that to a person), and partially because it was all theoretical anyway so it's not like it was even shit he could apply! Making it a waste of his goddamn time!

See, okay, Jesse _wanted_ to be pissed about Reyes practically shoving all this Guide horseshit down his throat, but honestly? The more Jesse learned about it, the more it fascinated him. Finally he had words for shit. Finally he had _context_.

His ‘charm’ was his empathic ability to perceive and influence other people’s 'aura’s, the colors and feelings around people he’d always called their 'shine’. Like most with the Guide’s gene, he’d been seeing auras for as long as he could remember. It wasn’t until he got older that he realized he could fuck with them, too. The extent to which he could fuck with someone's aura, the accuracy with which he could fuck it in a certain direction or toward a certain goal, and how far he could stretch his aura and still fuck with someone else's, that was called 'empathic mobility'. Empathy was the ‘point’ of the Guide's mutation, and why it was so strongly linked to the Sentinel's.

Sentinels were, as Jesse so eloquently put it in one of his essays, “the human brain overworking itself to the point of spontaneous combustion, pushing itself to its limits and beyond without an ounce of self-preservation”. (His tutor appreciated his flare for the dramatic but docked him points for oversimplification and excessive exaggeration, as there are, of yet, no recorded cases of Sentinels taking in so much stimuli that their brains literally explode.)

What Sentinels did have was the _capacity_ to see, hear, smell, taste, react, and focus to an extreme far beyond that of a normal human, creating a wide range across all senses that no one without the gene could replicate. The problem was their brains and bodies were still very human-like, and with that came very human deficiencies. Sentinels were still people, and the neural load of processing all that stimuli was immense. Navigating the range their senses could travel–-from being able to see fine details nearly a mile away, to possibly seeing something as minuscule and close-up as a hair-follicle on their own arm–-was staggeringly disruptive to their ability to, well, be a person. Their brains were not evolved enough to have wired-in control.

Sentinels could be taught control, sure, but it was so much easier to give a Sentinel to a Guide and let the Guide control it _for_ them. It’s what a Guide’s brain was _made_ to do.

It's what _Jesse_ was made to do. For the first time, with access to this wealth of knowledge and words for things he'd already lived, he didn't feel like such a freak.

Guides and Sentinels had been around for as long as written history, it just wasn’t until the advent of modern medicine that people started making _sense_ of them. Two distinct mutations of homo sapiens, each complimenting the other, ensuring their existence onto present day. Once they were defined by science as Distinct and Other, historians started working backwards, applying these new definitions to known leaders, and artists, and soldiers. People with uncanny empathy, with the ability to sway anyone onto their side, people who could ‘heal’ others of pain simply by being in their presence. Guides were called so many things across every culture in the world, but they kept falling into the same jobs; teacher, doctor, mediator, leader.

Sentinels had a rougher history. Without a Guide or a particularly strong will, they were prone to instability, often written off as mad by their contemporaries. They were also known for their violence, something Jesse was already well aware of. That stigma was still going strong, right next to ‘Can’t trust a Guide, they can brainwash ya’.

He brought it up to Reyes, who sat down with him at least once a month to catch up on Jesse's progress.

Reyes didn’t have a lot of time–-he was _The_ Guide overseeing the special ops division, shit Jesse wouldn’t have clearance to hear about for years to come–-so Reyes was hopping all over the world, constantly, to any and every US base at a moment’s notice. Sometimes he could make it back to Nevada to sit down with Jesse personally. Sometimes they had to do a conference call.

Sometimes they’d talk every night for a week straight, sometimes it’d be once a month and only once a month.

Jesse quickly found he preferred the personal visits to anything else.

Reyes wasn’t like any teacher Jesse had known. He didn’t want to beat Jesse over the head with information, he didn’t want Jesse to shut up and memorize shit just to spew it all out perfectly at some later date, performing on command like some well trained parrot. He wanted to know what Jesse _thought_ about shit. He wanted to hear Jesse’s _opinions_. Reyes argued with him, he’d make Jesse defend his opinions tooth and nail, and he told Jesse when he thought he was too far off track, but it was always a conversation and it was always centered on Jesse’s understanding of the topic at hand.

It made Jesse feel like he was really being listened to.

Reyes also taught him with examples. He asked what Jesse was learning, let the kid explain it to the best of his ability, and then Reyes would tell him stories. He’d tell Jesse real world examples about whatever dry book bullshit Jesse's tutor was trying to force feed him. He made the information _real_. He made it practical. And more over, it elevated Reyes to someone Jesse trusted to know his shit. Jesse found himself, if begrudgingly at first, pretty fucking impressed by all the shit Reyes knew and how easily he slotted what Jesse was passively digesting into real-world context.

It made Jesse _want_ to know Reyes’ opinion.

So one night, four or five months into their arrangement and a lecture about historical accounts of Sentinels predating the 20th century still fresh in his mind, Jesse asked Reyes point blank, “If Sentinels get such a raw deal, why even, y'know, keep 'em around?”

They were in Jesse’s apartment, Jesse sprawled out on his couch and Reyes in the armchair, socked feet propped up and crossed at the ankle on top of the coffee table. The greasy remains of their dinner was still littered around them, half of a hamburger and a handful of fries cradled in a crumpled wrapper in Reyes’ lap, Jesse’s drink and the cardboard housing his last chicken strip balanced on the couch cushion beside him.

Reyes cocked an eyebrow at the question but continued to chew. He nudged Jesse empathically; _go on_.

“I mean. So we can–-when someone’s _born_ , y’can tell right away if they’ve got the gene, right?  If they’re a Sent or not. So _why not_ jus’…not. Right there. Why even let them grow up, if life’s just gonna _suck_ for 'em anyway.”

Reyes’s lip twitched, the thunderhead of his aura rolling around in something close to humor as he swallowed and wiped the condiments off his beard. “What’re you suggesting, we should…kill babies?”

“I mean, jus' the Sentinels.”

Reyes put all his weight onto the arm rest and covered his eyes with one hand. “Oh my fucking god.” His thunderhead was most definitely laughing now, and not in a nice way.

Jesse felt his face flush. “Not in like–-not–-just, _fuck you_ , lemme _explain_.”

“I’m already listening, Jesse.”

“I don’t mean it like ‘fuck Sentinels, they should die’ I mean. I mean–-I mean just that, like, they’re not gonna be happy _anyways_.”

“Plenty of Sentinels are happy,” Reyes replied. He’d shifted his hand to prop up his chin. He had a scrunch to his features that reminded Jesse of someone looking at a particularly stupid but adorable dog. Not for the first time, Jesse wished he could still use his Shine to wipe a smile off someone’s dumb fucking face.

“ _Yeah_ ,” bites Jesse, “If they’ve been _lobotomized_.”

“Okay.” Reyes balled up the wrapper in his lap and lazily tossed it into the take-out bag left open on the floor. He then wiped his hands, sat back, and crossed his arms. Jesse now had his full attention. “Where is this coming from?”

Jesse bought himself a moment to plan by taking a big swallow of his soda. “Okay, so...Alice had this lesson on, like, on–-on Sentinels in history? And how before we had one name for them, and knew what was up, a lot of people just thought they were jus’, jus’ fucking crazy. And, I mean, that’s still happening, right? If they can’t get chipped or afford drugs, they’re jus’ gonna lose their minds and go apeshit. I mean, there’s not enough _Guides_ around, there _never_ are. It’s always, like, what’d you tell me, 50 to 1? Or something?”

Reyes was just watching him, expression no longer openly amused but still…open. “Latest census puts Sentinels to Guides at 47 to 1, yeah.”

“Yeah, so. So why not…fuck, okay, I’m not saying we should _kill babies_ , I’m just. It jus’. It–-it doesn’t fucking seem _fair_.”

Reyes cocked his head slightly. His storm cloud curled closer to Jesse, close enough for him to feel it meet his own Shine, the motion deliberate and slow so Jesse could in no way mistake the short flare of emotion that followed for his own. Reyes had done this before; he was making Jesse relive what he'd been feeling just a moment before, as he'd been speaking. It meant he wanted Jesse to chase whatever the feeling was, wanted him to follow it to some sort of conclusion, and to share _that_ rather than worry about 'properly' making his point.

This time, that feeling was a bone-deep ache of sympathy.

“I-–.” Jesse stalled, his throat closing around his sentiments as they threaten to tip too close to what he’d learn to see as weakness. “I just think it sucks,” he said.

“For them,” Reyes clarified. “For Sentinels.”

“Yeah,” said Jesse. “Yeah, like. Compared to us, their mutation’s fuckin’-–fuckin’ _garbage_.”

“Hmm,” said Reyes.

Then he did something he’d never done in the five months they’d been talking. He pulled out his phone, dialed a number, got up,  _ and fucking left _ .

Jesse sat there, silently shifting through a surprising amount of emotions as Reyes disappeared out the front door, like they hadn't been in the middle a goddamn conversation. In need of a distraction from what was leaning dangerously close to betrayal, Jesse set to finishing off his soda. 

“Put the pout away, kid,” Reyes said, when he came back a minute or two later. “You're going on a field trip.”

Jesse half choked on his straw. “A what? Why?” He tried to puff up his Shine, show that he was excited about the prospect.

“I think you should meet somebody. She’s on another base, gotta check with her mentor, see if she’s got time to meetcha. Worse comes to worse, maybe you two can be pen pals.”

“Okay,” said Jesse. “I don’…really _get_ it.” How they got to this point, why this decision got made, any of it.

Reyes rolled his eyes. “She’s a _Sentinel_ . Your age. Fucking brilliant. _Apparently_ you need to see more’a them than drug addicts and army rats, cuz you’re _not seeing_ the big picture.”

"Okay," said Jesse.

Later that week he was on a plane out to New York State to meet Angela Ziegler.

The meeting was short, awkward, and left Jesse with the distinct impression he’d wasted his time and likely an embarrassing amount of taxpayers dollars.

See, he really didn’t think Angela liked him all that much.

She was Swiss, and while she was studying abroad in America, her spoken English was still a little rough. She was only seventeen, same as Jesse (as far as Reyes and the paperwork he’d filed with the government knew anyway), and for his part, Jesse's German lessons had amounted to some glorified vocab lists, nowhere near enough to hold up a conversation. (He wouldn’t find out until later that German and _Swiss_ German were two completely different things, and he was basically doomed from the start). She couldn’t understand his accent and he couldn’t understand hers, so the few sentences they spoke to each other were confused and halting and ultimately led nowhere.

Jesse relayed all of this back to Reyes, who replied that he didn’t fucking care.

The point was, Jesse knew Angela existed.

Angela, a Sentinel, who was going to medical school in America, after finishing her degree in Biology in Switzerland. At _seventeen._

She didn’t need heavy medication, a regulation chip, or a Guide. She had the willpower to isolate her focus and had taught herself techniques to regulate the rest of her senses, all on her own. She was a rising star among the Sentinel community, which was how Reyes had a connection to her. Her mentor, another Sentinel within the medical field, had reached out to the US army, relaying that Angela had interest in studying the reaction to and overall effectiveness of the Army's latest repression chips. She wanted to build something _better,_ something that allowed for more emotional variation for the Sentinels and lessened the empathic load for Reyes as their commander.

Even though Jesse could only understand a few words of it, Angela's enthusiasm when she spoke about her work was clear in how she Shined. She was so _bright_ , her _future_ was so bright, and she was just beginning.

And none of it would have been possible if she wasn’t a Sentinel.

When Jesse got back to base, Alice started her next lesson with re-framing the known capabilities of the Sentinel's gene. Clearly Reyes had had a word or two with her and wanted to really hammer his point home.

Sentinels were not only able to take in vasts amounts of varied stimuli, they were capable of _retaining_ it to a higher degree, in comparison to normal humans or Guides. A Sentinel's compartmentalization and factual recall was superior to normal humans. Their response-time, both physical _and_ mental, was superior.

Alice ended the lesson by introducing Jesse to some known historical figures most scholars agreed were likely Sentinel. They all shared the same traits; vast intellect, exceptional and speedy judgement, large contributions many different fields throughout their lifetimes.

Jesse got it. He understood the fucking lesson.

What he didn’t understand was why it went so right for some Sentinels and went so wrong for others.

“Money,” said Reyes.

“…shit, yeah,” agreed Jesse.

Money and power made all the difference.

Angela was an outlier. She was a fucking unicorn, as far as Sentinels go. And beyond that, her family was well-off enough to afford to support her quest for higher learning and keep her on a regular, if unusually low, dose of suppressants.

Most Sentinels didn’t have that kind of luck. If they weren’t being overwhelmed by their natural senses, they were being heavily medicated, which was its own kind of grey hell. Every Sentinel’s head was different, was affected by medication differently, meaning every one of them needed specialized care. But that shit wasn't _profitable_ , and people suffered for it. Especially if they were poor, _especially_ if they were uninsured. Rushed doctors visits, inconsistent care, low-grade chips and generic brand suppressants that muted too much or too little, all leading to higher rates of depression and suicide among those carrying the Sentinel's gene.

Shit was bleak.

Until science caught up and shit became cheaper, until the 'one size fits all' approach to treating Sentinels finished dying its slow, painful death, and until the overall system became more accommodating and accessable, the best thing a Sentinel could hope for was they’d get picked up by a Guide.

Unlicensed Guides weren’t allowed to have full control of their auras. Legally, that’d been determined to be a breach of privacy against the common man, so after the age of thirteen, anyone with the Guide’s gene was required to take suppressants that limited their empathic mobility. And because America was a Capitalist Hellscape, they were expected to pay out of pocket for those suppressants.

Which was why Jesse had never taken one before the military's raid on Deadlock.

Jesse lucked out, that his reaction to the shit the military had him taking now on the daily was relatively neutral. It worked as intended with few noticeable side-effects. He could still perceive most auras accurately–-size, color, intensity, movement-–as well as pick out emotions within a certain distance of other people. Reyes could still interact with _Jesse’s_ aura, too, which wasn’t always the case for someone on suppressants.

Basically the suppressants interfered with the part of his brain that gave him control over his own empathic field. It left it numb, more or less. Not a perfect analogy, but its how Jesse experienced it. Like a limb that had fallen asleep and was now heavy and unwieldy. For some people, especially on higher doses, it got so numb that it couldn’t take in any new information at all–-no outside emotions, no perception of auras.

People _said_ that made Guides the same as everyone else, but Jesse strongly, _loudly_ disa-fucking-greed. To him, it was like expecting someone who was born with a third arm to numb it, to the point of immobilization, and then drag it around with them and just act like that wasn't a different goddamn experience than people who had no third arm at all. The shit had weight to it, it got in the way, he _knew it was fucking there and that he couldn't use it because some asshole wrote a law that said he couldn't be tru sted with it !_

It. Was. Different.

The shit he’d been given that week he rotted in a cell was worse. It was specifically designed to sever a Guide from their empathic field _completely_. It was overkill on purpose, it was standard practice to give it to all Guides behind bars, for the whole of their sentence, including any trial, and it scared the absolute shit out of Jesse.

He’d been real fucking close to being grey for the rest of his natural goddamn life. That shit hadn't just fucked with his Shine, _it'd fucked with him_. And there were Guides, behind bars, right now, getting shot up every four hours, fucking greyed out to the extreme. He had no idea why people didn't see how fucked that was.

Jesse fucking hated the medication for guides, and was very happy now that he was on his way to being off that shit, _any shit_ , for forever. He was gonna get his license and become a practicing Guide.

There were a lot of them in the military, a lot working in hospitals as therapists and doctors, as lawyers and intermediaries and diplomats. There was also a new surge of nonprofits and government funded Guide programs targeting middle and lower-class Sentinels, providing them help they otherwise couldn’t have hoped to afford. Shit started getting big in the 60s and while it was always growing, it was still mostly localized to urban areas, big cities that could afford to the programs into their budgets.

Most of this information (minus that diversion into charting auras during math) came from a mixture of lessons with Alice and chats with Reyes across the course of his first year on base. And sure, Jesse found it all pretty interesting, if somewhat morally distressing. There was one thing he was genuinely curious about, enough to research it on his own;

Sentinel and Guide _Bonding._

All he knew about ‘bonding’ was that it, reportedly, involved sex. As a proud teenage boy, he had some interest in doing sex some day. It was always gonna be kinda tricky, just because of the cards he’d been dealt, but having to explain his genital configuration to a possible partner didn’t worry him nearly as much as the whole Bonding thing did.

Did it happen with just anyone? Was he gonna be, like, emotionally married to the first person he fucked? Or was it only with Sentinels? And was it even in his control, like, there--there had been some close goddamn calls while he was in Deadlock, encounters with Sents he sure as hell wasn’t keen on reliving, and maybe all the Sents on base were chipped, but did that, like, stop it? Could _he_ stop it? Could he _consciously_ keep a bond from forming?

And what about masturbation? Did that tie in anywhere? Cuz eventually he was gonna be in close proximity to a whole shitton of Sentiels and if he was expected to be a goddamn _catholic monk about this shit for the whole of his military career--_

Luckily, there was plenty of research on the subject accessible through the world wide web.

Even the question of ‘Guides masturbating near unbonded Sentinels’ was covered by no less than three separate studies.

_God Bless._

Bonding was heavily researched considering how much it affected the lives and careers of anyone with a mutation. Jesse had gone in thinking it was mostly for Sentinels, but the benefits for Guides, especially ones who made a living around their empathic mobility, were pretty substantial.

The term ‘Bonding’ referred to the (at times temporary) merging of a Sentinel and Guide’s auras. This primarily gave the Guide more precise control over the Sentinel they were bonded to, making it easier for them to moderate the Sentinel’s sensory input and emotional wellbeing. Jesse knew that going in. What he didn’t know was that in especially ‘strong’ bonds, the Guide’s control over their own aura was improved, sometimes magnifying their mobility by what some were claiming as a factor of _fifty_.

In that light, Reyes’ thunderhead suddenly made a lot more goddamn sense.

How one forms a bond seemed to rely on a few specific factors.

According to just about _everyone,_ orgasm was one of them.

Which meant there was literally hundreds of research papers and tens of thousands of hours of scientific study entirely devoted to making a bunch of Sentinels and Guides cum.

When that realization hit, Jesse had to set his laptop aside and spend a good long time on his floor laughing his ass off.

Just…the idea of nerds _fuckin_ in the name of _science_ was too goddamn hilarious.

And these people were _nerds._ College graduate, doctorate degree wielding fucking dweebs, using the scientific method for its highest of all purposes and documenting their _orgies_ so that young men like him could look back on their findings and be assured that, no, giving himself a handie one tent over from some random Sentinel wouldn’t result in an unwanted bonding of their auras.

But, okay, so; orgasm was a factor. The others were physical proximity (also pretty assumed), aura compatibility (new shit) and emotional availability and/or personal investment (oh thank _fuck_ ).

Physical proximity was pretty self explanatory; the closer you are to the person you’re bonding with, the better. Now, if all other factors were present, it was allegedly _possible_ to bond with someone without physically touching them. For a bond to form, the Sentinel’s aura just had to be within range of the Guide’s. Without the auras making contact, there’s no merger, _so_. Further studies suggested that the strength of a bond was affected by proximity, not just of auras but of bodies, during the duration. Bonds made with physical contact were reportedly stronger than bonds made without.

Aura compatibility was something Jesse didn’t realize he was already aware of. Once again, it was shit from his own life, he just didn’t know it had some fancy scientific name. He knew Sentinels and Guides were attracted to each other from goddamn first hand experience. So long as both parties weren’t on medication, it was kind hard to miss. Sentinels–-proper Sentinels, not the poor grey, chipped bastards he was meant to be babysitting when his schooling was over-–had a neon tinge to their Shine that he’d always found attractive in the most literal sense of the word, something he couldn't look away from once he'd spotted it. It varied from Sent to Sent, but if their Shine was shot through with Jesse’s favorite color, he had trouble not gravitating right over to them, giving them his full attention.

According to the research, Sentinels recognized Guides in a number of different ways. Any sense they had could alert them to the presence of a Guide, including being able to see an approximation of the Guide’s aura, described by most as a halo around their body. The intensity of the ‘alert’, regardless of the sense registering it, was reliant on compatibility.

Jesse'd never known what he looked like to the Sentinel's that chased him and he’d always been too chickenshit to ask, but ever since he hit puberty the first time around, they knew him for what he was. Some of them had showed their interest, and they hadn't been subtle.

Didn’t matter what color their highlight was, Jesse always made sure to make it fucking _clear_ he wasn’t to be touched without goddamn permission.

But anyway; for a bond to form easily and be built to last, you wanted to do it with someone you felt a natural attraction to. It's nature's giant neon sign saying "Want the most out of a bond? Fuck this one!"

The most important bonding factor, without question, was emotional availability and/or personal investment of the participants. The absence of these didn’t keep the bond from forming, not if all other factors were present and especially strong, but it _always_ resulted in a weak, temporary bond that was easily broken. If a Guide couldn’t consciously untangle their aura from the Sentinel’s, they just needed to put some distance between them. Most apathetic or emotionally shitty bonds could be broken after a hundred paces.

Don't like the bastard? No problem, shit's built to break.

And any bond could be broken. Well, hypothetically. Pairs with especially strong bonds did not want to ‘divorce’, because those bonds were built on things like trust and love and probably pretty good sex, and divorce was apparently pretty damn traumatic if the bond was especially strong, because you were literally forcing two people’s brain waves apart after possibly years of being connected, so most happily bonded pairs weren’t exactly lining up to wreck their relationship all to add to some nerd’s numbers. But the assumption was that, yes, you could break up with anyone if you had to. Shitty bonds were easy to divorce, _that_ was the important part.

Very recently, as recent as the last ten years, medically induced bonds became a thing. Some people were put off by the whole sex requirement for bonding, so some scientists threw together a cocktail of dopamine and oxytocin and started injecting it into willing participants. Eventually, they worked out a fairly full-proof system, incorporating the other known requirements for a successful bond, and boom! The first medically induced, sexless-bonds were formed!

The reports themselves said the sexless-bonds were fine, but when Jesse went looking for more studies, he came across the backlash. The majority of G/S researchers insisted the chemically induced bonds were inferior to sex-formed bonds, in both strength and effectiveness. Most importantly, they claimed the Guides in sexless-bonds didn't show signs of having their empathy boosted post-bond.

But Jesse had read something that same day about how empathic-boosting of bonded Guides was sometimes reliant on the frequency of which you re-establish your bond. So he double checked and got smacked with the reminder that empathic-boosting was still notoriously hard to research and this was just _one_ theory on how _maybe_ such large variations in empathic mobility can occur over time, you know, _reportedly_ —oh and also the sample size within the sexless-bond report _he’d_ read was kinda small, so how did the naysayers know it wasn’t just the people involved? And that someone with a more mobile-inclined aura wouldn’t get their shit boosted from the process? And this was just the first try, right? Were there more studies or recorded follow ups for these participants?

At this point it was like 1 am, and Jesse was getting a migraine. This was turning into a shitshow and he was sure Alice had a whole weeks worth of readings covering the debacle, he could happily wait until then. He was putting the laptop away and going to bed.

(Amusing Sidebar; Guides also could reportedly form temporary bonds with other Guides, without any sex or sex substitutes, but that was commonly considered more an exploitation of a loophole than nature working as intended. Whether anyone had figured out how to bond a Sentinel to a Sentinel, or a normal person to a normal person through the intervention of a Guide, Jesse had yet to find out.)

Speaking of ‘normal people’, another interesting thing he learned was how ‘normal people’ were reacting to all this literal fucking research.

There were two distinct camps; people who thought fucking for science was stupid/wrong/morally corrupt, and people who thought Guides were just straight up full of shit.

The ‘fucking for science is EVIL’ camp was easy to tune out and honestly pretty fun to point and laugh at. The ‘Guides are liars’ camp was, by comparison, completely goddamn _infuriating._

See, some dipshits were convinced Guides were talking out their ass about the whole aura and bonding thing, or maybe they weren't making it up, they just weren’t _trustworthy_ enough in their reporting to be considered _real_ scientists making _real_ discoveries. _Real_ scientists work with _hard_ data, compiled by cold, unfeeling machines, and there wasn’t a machine to date that could register auras, let alone with the precision of a Guide. Some believed certain electronic fields were _close_ , but most ‘real’ scientists were still on the fence. The science was still so new. Yes, you could document how the Guide’s body reacted to auras, how someone else’s body reacted to their aura being manipulated by a Guide, and create models based on a bonding pair before and after their bonding, but the actual thing being manipulated and the actual thing manipulating it were still a big ol mystery, and holy shit did that piss some people off.

This resulted in a definite divide between G/S scientists and ‘normal’ scientists, G/S research and ‘normal’ research.

It also resulted in Jesse having some new faces to picture when he went to the shooting range on the weekends.

Reyes would later tell him not to subject himself to that kind of horseshit reporting, just ignore the people who were wrong, exit out of the goddamn website, and go on with his life.

This was much later, a year and a half in, because while Jesse heavily suspected Reyes of actively tracking his internet history, and yeah he was starting to warm up to the guy, he _wasn’t_ looking forward to whatever version of the Birds and the Bees Reyes gave to his Guides in Training. And he wasn’t gonna just ask for it out of the fucking blue. So, Jesse waited until Bonding was being covered by Alice before bringing the subject up during dinner.

“Yer bonded with Jack, right?”

Reyes' lip twitched, hinting at a smirk that was more than obvious in how his storm-cloud aura bubbled up at the edges, dark purple with undertones of amused pink underneath. He didn’t look up from his chopsticks as he dug them around the last dregs of cheap take-out lo mein. “Thought you had us figured out your first day.” 

“Well–-yeah, but. Okay, so. Is it, y’know. Is it any _good?”_

Reyes slowly drew his eyes up to Jesse, lifted one bushy eyebrow, and then brought his whole aura off his shoulders, letting it unfurl to its full, utterly _immense_ glory.

“You tell me, kid.”

Jesse snorted. “What’d I tell ya about showing off?”

Instead of replying or pairing his aura down in any way, Reyes draped his thunderhead casually around the room, immediately reminding Jesse of the day he’d been introduced to Mister Commander Jack Morrison. Topical.

"How'd it happen?" asked Jesse. "You an' him?"

"Got paired off by Uncle Sam." Reyes continued to fish around in his take-out box as he spoke, "military was funding my way toward the Guide exam, so when I passed, they pointed me toward the Sentinel they most wanted off a chip. Jackie was doing fine with one, but the Guide before me, the one overseeing his unit, he knew he'd do better bonded." He withdrew his chopsticks, a carrot or something grasped between them. "They knew _I'd_ do better bonded, and I was hungry for it," he punctuated this by making eye contact with Jesse and popped the carrot into his mouth. He continued, chewing out one side of his mouth and talking out the other. "I wanted to be the _best_. Didn't really care who I had to fuck to get there--"

"And it was before the medical bonds?"

"Yeah--way before, like. When'd those start, '89? Early '90s?" Jesse couldn't recall the exact date on the study, it'd been several months since he'd come across it, and fuck had it been late at night. He shrugged, and Reyes shrugged back. "We got hitched in '79, so yeah, wasn't a possibility yet."

"Right, but, would you have? Aren't they, like, shittier?"

Reyes made a face. Little flashes of anger crackled through his thunderhead, bursting hot white one second and winking out the next. He felt the anger and then let it go, didn't let it affect his aura's naturally smokey disposition, something he'd pointed out to Jesse as an important to the job, something Jesse would have to learn to do with his own emotions, one day. Still, an aura that big, any emotion left an impression, and his displeasure was left hanging in the air like ozone after a lightning strike.

"You listen to the wrong people, y'might get that idea, yeah," said Reyes.

"What's _that_ mean?" asked Jesse.

"It means some people have an axe to grind, when it comes to advances in the field." Another small flash of lightning somewhere deep within the clouds. Reyes shifted in his chair to set his take-out aside on the coffee table. "People get complacent. It's easier, when they can say 'its always been this way, this is how the world works and there's no use changing it', and people _l_ _ove_ easy, but that kind of thinking sets you up for getting knocked on your ass when change does come around. We know bonds form through sex. That shit works, it'll likely always work, it's _safe_. So the people who're fuckin'," he waved a hand to indicate 'the people' out in the world. Another flash, "clutching their pearls over medical bonds, they're just scared of having their safe assumptions turned ass up."

"Boss," said Jesse, "do these people, maybe, piss you off?"

"Goodness, no," said Reyes. He sat back and crossed his arms. The part of his storm closest to Jesse roiled in amusement and Jesse allowed himself a smirk. "And they aren't obnoxiously loud, either. Or missing the _goddamn point_ of bonds, in the first place." He lifted a hand to motion at Jesse, and asked, "what, do you think, is the point of bonds?"

After a moment of consideration--Jesse no longer felt that making Reyes wait for a thoughtful answer would end in some kind of punishment, in fact Reyes prefered when he took his time to when he just ran his mouth--Jesse said, "to make us stronger."

Reyes shook his head, "that's the point for _the military_ , for a career, what's the point for two people? Individuals?"

Jesse rubbed at the little tuft of beard right under his lips, thought back over what he knew about bonds, then what he knew about Guides and auras and Sentinels.

"...to be...happier people?"

Reyes nodded. "Exactly. And do we need sex for that?"

Jesse's response was immediate. "Uh, _yes_."

"Not _you personally_ , Jesse, people in general. Do people need to fuck one another to be happy and connected?" Jesse opened his mouth to respond, but Reyes cut him off with, "did you need to fuck anyone in Deadlock to make them your family?"

The revulsion was immediate, evident in Jesse's Shine and the way his face twisted up in a scowl. Reyes waved a hand as if to say 'see? Point made'. "They aren't the same," countered Jesse.

"Why not?"

"Bonds--they're like--it's like getting Guide-married. Aura-married."

"Marriages don't hinge on sex."

"Wha--yes they _do_."

"Marriages," Reyes said slowly, index finger raised, "hinge on communication. Like any other relationship."

Jesse, feeling somewhat like he was getting a shovel to the face rather than the conversation he'd signed up for, stuck out his chin and decided to be contrary. "Are you fucking Jack or not?"

Reyes stared at him. Jesse stared back. A second passed, then Reyes sighed and drew his thunderhead back in around his shoulders. This was not the reaction Jesse was expecting and he immediately felt off-balance. Had he...insulted Reyes with that? Had he meant to? Did he care?

Yes. Yes he cared, fuck, okay. He sort of knew that already, that he'd come to give a damn about the man who'd basically tricked him into singing his life away to the US of A, but he wasn't really ready to face it and certainly not like this.

Jesse knew he could just use his aura to probe at Reyes', get a better understanding of what was arching through the storm clouds once they were connected, but. Then Reyes would know that Jesse gave a shit.

He probably already knew Jesse gave a shit, he was the highest ranking Guide in like the whole Us Military, and Jesse _still_ had no idea what his Shine even looked like normally, let alone what it was telegraphing now.

"Yeah, kid, we fuck," said Reyes. Jesse, who'd started staring at a point just past him while lost in his own head, stole a glance at the man's face and found his expression to be more or less neutral, maybe pointedly so. Feeling like, now, Reyes was trying to hide some shit from him, Jesse took in the clouds at his back, searching for a hint to what that might be. They were roiling in amusement. Jesse focused back on Reyes' face just as the man let his lip twitch into a tiny lil smirk. "I don't _actually care_ if you know that," said Reyes. "But it's not all we do. And it's not what makes _this_ ," and he lifted both arms, fingers spread to indicate the whole of his aura, "what it is. This is from work, and trust and communication."

" _And sex_ ," said Jesse. Because he still felt contrary, and also, knew what he'd read and wasn't going to take Reyes' word as gospel if he insisted on contradicting nearly  _everything._

There was a crackle of amusement, pink and bright, and shot through with white hot irritation, right behind Reye's head, right as he let his arms drop. "Fine. And sex. Cuz we like that, and it works for us. But!" The index finger came out again, "I know pairs that don't. Far as I can tell, if they put in the same amount of work, they get the same results."

"But that--it's not the same results, they aren't as _good_ as you," said Jesse.

A small flare of red backlighting Reyes' face-- _pride._ "I said, ' _if_ they put in the work'."

"Oh. Right. Because no one works as hard as you." Jesse finished the statement with a roll of his eyes.

"You find the fucker who does, you can bring 'em to me."

Another pause, this time buffered with the knowledge they'd returned to some sort of equilibrium. Jesse started rooting around in the remains of their take-out bag, looking for the fortune cookies. Reyes told him, empathically, to toss him one, too, which Jesse did.

"It just pisses me off," said Reyes as he pulled the wrapper apart, "seeing people pitching fits over shit like that."

Jesse broke open his cookie. "The medi-bonds."

Reyes actually grinned, "yeah! Yeah, medi-bonds, I like that."

Jesse couldn't help it, he grinned back.

"It could help a lot of people," Reyes continued, "get a lot more Guides out there, doing good work, could make bonds easier; that's a good thing!" Reyes had crushed most of his cookie on accident and was picking the pieces out of his palm. "Shouldn't get so much backlash."

"It's just brain chemicals, right? That's why it's needed--the," Jesse floundered, realizing Alice hadn't actually covered the chemicals in class, which meant he'd never heard the words pronounced, which meant he didn't know how the fuck to pronounce them _now_ , but _fuckit_ , "doo-pah-mine and oxy--whatever."

"Oxytocin."

"Right. It's--enough of those chemicals in the brain is what bonds the auras together."

"There's also a nerve involved, but yeah."

"It's not, like, the _act_ of fucking, even though that. I mean that does meet the whole closeness requirements."

"But you can fuck somebody and not give a shit about if they live or die afterward."

The frankness of it made Jesse snort. It probably wouldn't have, a year ago, but he basically only spoke to Reyes or Alice anymore and Alice was such a proper lil' thing, she never would've let something like that slip.

"Or during," Jesse added. It was Reyes' turn to snort. He followed that up by dumping his palm of cookie dust into his mouth and chewing.

"They're just making sex out to be more important than it is, and for what? Just to halt progress. You need to cum to bond, fine. You poke the right nerve with an electrode, you can make someone cum. Hell, you smoke enough weed beforehand, you’re guaranteed to get boosted. It's just a matter of time before someone comes out with the surefire way to make a boosted bond without anyone having to lose their pants."

Jesse's eyebrows were most certainly lost behind his bangs, now. "Whoa, whoa, smoking weed does _what?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smoking weed before sex can give you prolonged orgasms so 8>b that would definitely affect a bond some way or another

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to see me liveblog my writing process, feel free to check me out on tumblr at bluandorange.tumblr.com
> 
> all related writing will be under 'sg au' and 'blu liveblogs fic'


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